Proliferation of smart phones, and their subsequent use to perform high data-rate communications, has resulted in an exponential growth in the volume of data flowing over wireless networks. The increased volume of data flowing over the networks is taxing the service providers and the network infrastructure responsible for ensuring the data flows at acceptable rates for most, if not all, users. If unchecked, a small population of users of the wireless networks, consumers of excessive portions of the available wireless network bandwidth, would degrade the quality of service for all users.
One form of potential abuse of wireless network services is excessive consumption of a wireless network's available bandwidth by using a mobile device as a wireless router for a set of other Internet-capable wireless devices, including: notebook computers, netbook computers, tablet PCs, etc. For instance, certain mobile operating systems, such as ANDROID, allow users to select an option to use a smart phone in a tethering mode. In the tethering mode the mobile device operates as a modem connecting a plurality of wireless data bandwidth consuming devices, such as laptops and tablets, to the Internet via the mobile device's data connection to a mobile (cellular) wireless data network.
Such usage pattern, if unchecked, potentially places a heavy load on existing mobile networks. As a consequence, mobile network operators are faced with exponential and highly variable network traffic requiring increased capital expenditures to deal with new peak usage levels induced by the aforementioned tethering mode.